Voice of the people (letter).

Children Dig It

July 31, 1999|By Sheila R. Castillo, Community Vice President Windy City Earth Force.

CHICAGO — Although "Towns struggle to get kids to dig gardening" (Metro, July 21) depicts children as apathetic regarding nature, there are successful programs that get these youngsters interested in the environment.

Community Action and Problem Solving (CAPS) begins this fall in the Lake Calumet and northwest Indiana region. Earth Force, a national organization, runs this middle-school program in seven other cities around the country. We have seen some amazing results from kids who maybe didn't "like to get dirty" before joining Earth Force.

As the article mentions, giving children hands-on experience is key. Schools that have implemented CAPS got their students interested in nature by encouraging these young people to identify environmental problems important to them in the community and then working to solve the problems. Teams of 10- to 14-year-olds have embarked on projects from building butterfly preserves to petitioning their local government to install facilities accessible to the physically handicapped at a popular riverbank site. The creativity of these children is just astounding.

Many children have continued the Earth Force project through the summer and into the next school year. We are confident we will see a significant level of commit-ment among the young people in the nine schools and community-based youth groups in the Lake Calumet region who will participate in Earth Force's CAPS program this coming school year..